Best written characters
Or is that too specific?
8 Likes
Best combination of mechanics and story. For games that are particularly well designed or innovative in how the mechanics and story mesh together. This might be kind of vague but it’s something I’d like to see more of.
6 Likes
The Xyzzy’s “Best NPCs” award works out to this in practice, so I don’t think it’s too specific! Frankly, “Best Written Characters” is probably a better description of the category as it currently stands in 2022. Maybe “Best Cast” would be a pithier title for the same concept, though?
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Outstanding Puzzle Design
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Best Use of Interactivity
(I feel strongly that we should celebrate games who use the medium to the fullest - ideally, this award would go to something that couldn’t be done as anything but IF).
16 Likes
Best visual design
9 Likes
Best artwork (as opposed to graphics above, which seems more nebulous to me)
6 Likes
Best game about repairing a spaceship
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Best title! 
8 Likes
I’ve updated the main post, but here are the current nominations past the 15-vote threshhold:
Nominations that have passed the fifteen vote threshhold:
-Outstanding Game of the Year (automatically included)
-Outstanding Debut
-Outstanding Game with a play time over 2 hours
-Outstanding Short Game
-Outstanding Unawarded Game
-Outstanding Feelies
-Trailblazer Award
-Oustanding (insert language here) Game (currently thinking French, German, Spanish; not sure about English, as its already so represented and < 5 non-English games ever had XYZZY nominations)
-Hanon’s suggestion changing ‘best’ to ‘outstanding’ (reflected in list)
-Outstanding Worldbuilding
-Outstanding (Genre) Game, with genres including Comedy, Drama, Horror
People will not be required to vote in each category; every contest will be a separate poll, and people can vote in whichever category they desire.
11 Likes
“Outstanding non-English Language Game”?
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I made that suggestion above, but it d didn’t get as many votes as the separate languages idea.
I figure this first year might be a bit rough, but it should settle down in subsequent years. Any categories with low votes will get the ax!
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Well, if you’re going to do this, I think it should reflect more genres. I just listed a few. But I’d be pretty ticked off if I wrote a badass sci-fi game and there was no sci-fi category.
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What if there are only a few games eligible for a category in a given year (e.g. games with feelies). Will there be a minimum number of games required in order to be able to vote on a category?
Also, what happens if a category is very similar to an existing XYZZY Awards category?
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My plan is to axe any category vote with less than 5 games.
Overlap with XYZZY is fine; while I’m not intending to replace the awards, and haven’t tried to ensure that they meet the same needs, I’m comfortable with any amount of overlap.
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Do you have a proposed list?
I can think of comedy, drama, horror, sci-fi, western (not enough people though lol), mystery, fantasy, historical.
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thriller, romance, slice of life…
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What seems logical, since categorizing all these games seems like a ton of work, and because genres are not evenly represented, is to do the first year with some lumped-together genres. Like niche genres all together: historical/western/noir/gothic. Fantasy/sci-fi (although there may be enough of each to justify their own categories). Horror/thriller/espionage/mystery. Romance/drama/slice of life/autobiographical. Comedy/satire/farce.
Get authors to self-identify, ideally on IFDB when they list so you don’t have to do it. If I tried to game the system by listing “The Spectators” as a comedy because there’s one joke in it, I’d get disqualified.
See how the numbers pan out in the first year and then start extending the categories as the data justifies it.
Just an idea.
2 Likes
I think we can handle the multiple genres by having one big poll for “outstanding game in a specific genre” and people can vote for games with the genre in the vote. Then any genre with at least 5 games receiving votes and a top game with at least 5 votes can get an award.
Edit: cross-posted, but I could see either idea working or a combination of both.
This system could also work for games in individual programming languages.
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Right, you end up with combinatorial explosion with genres if you go far outside “drama/comedy/SFF”. There isn’t going to be a Western every year.
What about:
- Outstanding Comedy
- Outstanding Drama
- Outstanding Genre Representation
Cuz then those genre games could fall into any one. It’s more the game that makes you laugh, the game that gave you pathos, and the game that had the coolest lasers/unicorns/masked killer and you don’t end up with like one in each micro-genre category.
EDIT: Mathbrush basically said that - have a singular “Coolest Use of Genre” type category that you could have a bigger pool for and award that person who does a game where they heavily did the research.
Maybe “Outstanding Genre/Period Representation”?
3 Likes